What Is BlogPress? A Complete Review for New Bloggers

One of the best ways to start a blog is to use WordPress because it’s current and versatile. I like it when someone takes the trouble to show you how to set things up because WordPress can be a bit challenging for beginners. Today, we’ll check out a program to find out what BlogPress is all about and see if it meets your blogging goals.

What Can You Get With BlogPress

Created by a husband and wife team, BlogPress is a hosting and training platform that helps newbies start a WordPress blog and monetize from it later on. There are step-by-step modules to follow, weekly article updates that shares blogging tips and a portal for you to access your WordPress dashboard.

There are 3 types of hosting packages to choose from.

Monthly – $14.95

Yearly – $97 (get 5 months for free)

Lifetime – $147 (one time payment)

Each comes with 14 days free trial so you can actually test them out before committing to any of the plans.

The Pros

I am a big believer when it comes to blogging for business so there are a few things that I like about BlogPress from the very beginning.

1) The first part of the training is a 90 day plan where the process of blogging is broken down into bite-size topics that are easy to follow. Nothing too exaggerated and straight to the point. They have also included video explanations to support the tutorials, making it easier to understand. Besides, the training comes with a lot of resources and blogging ideas so I find that to be pretty helpful.

2) Another thing that I am impressed is how they go into the details about setting up a WordPress site. Each feature is explained in such a manner that it makes technical stuff less intimidating for newbies.

Within the WordPress core training, you’ll learn how to optimize for SEO using Yoast (a good plugin), how to create an email campaign through Mailchimp (another good autoresponder company) and building an audience through social media. All of these are viable techniques that can grow the presence and traffic to your blog.

3) The tutors paint a realistic picture from the beginning, emphasizing on content creation over designs. This is important because a lot of newbies tend to be obsessed with how their blogs look like and totally miss the point of blogging which is to provide information for the readers. By publishing at least 10 articles/month, you can make your blog more engaging and get better rankings on Google.

4) The second part of the training is about WordPress themes and what I like about BlogPress hosting is that they come with premium themes from Genesis. In case you don’t know, Genesis is a reputable web developing company that makes well-coded and professional looking templates for WordPress websites. They make sure that your site is fast loading and compatible with any web changes.

A typical premium theme would cost you about $130, but as a BlogPress member, you are getting access to 150 templates without any additional cost. That’s a pretty good deal and they even show how to set up each of these themes for your blog.

The Cons

Despite the comprehensive offerings, I found that BlogPress falls short in some very crucial area.

1) For example, in the 90 day blogging plan, they didn’t teach you about niche selection. It is assumed that you already have one in mind OR you just write whatever that’s on your mind and figure one out later on. Maybe some people are good at it, but for most of us who are just starting out, the lack of this concept can lead to a blog that has no direction, no targeted audience and will not excel in sales conversion.

Understanding what a niche is all about is as important as why you write a blog in the first place, so that’s one topic I hope to see included in their future training.

2) Another technique that’s not within their radar of training is keyword research. While you are taught to publish frequently, you are not shown how to search for topics to write about. Targeted keywords keep your blog topics relevant and in the long term, they contribute immensely to your blog ranking and organic traffic from the search engines. Going into blogging without understanding keyword research is a huge waste of time, so this is one skill to master sooner rather than later.

Firstly, promoting eBooks/softwares/membership sites may not be every blogger’s cup of tea. Some people are more comfortable doing physical products and the way this is done can be very different from digital products.

Secondly, earning from ads is a viable option when you have a ton of traffic – we are talking about thousands of visitors per day here. If you are just starting out and already placing ads on your blog, you actually risk losing customers to paltry ad commissions over bigger ones that you can profit from merchant companies.

4) BlogPress offers a convenient in-house service that connects a new domain to a WordPress site, but they are super pricey. If you want to include privacy protection and a business email, the fee could come up to be $59/year.

Honestly, other places can offer you the same thing at ⅓ of the price so before you purchase one, read my domain fee comparison on this page to know what you are getting.

5) People use WordPress because it’s a flexible blogging platform, but that’s unlikely the case when it comes to BlogPress hosting. In reality, you are only getting 5000 MB (5GB) of storage space. If you are planning to monetize long term, you are going to need more than that.

Even with the most basic provision by other hosting companies, you can get up to 30GB per plan – that’s 6x more than BlogPress.

The other downside is that you can’t add plugins on your own. This feature is fully controlled by the team and if you want to add something, you’ll need to contact their support to get things done for you. That is a bit cumbersome if you asked me.

So Is BlogPress Worthy of Your Time

In all honesty, I think they have some really great training and resources when it comes to blogging. Their support is prompt and they are a decent company. But I can’t say the same for the WordPress hosting. The limited storage and inaccessibility to plugins are a major turn off and it’s not something I would recommend for people who are serious about using blogging as an online business.

If you want a more superior hosting, I would encourage you to check out the Wealthy Affiliate platform instead. It comes with step-by-step tutorials, live video training and also a huge community of like-minded people who are all aspiring bloggers and entrepreneurs.

Keen to try it out? Connect with me from inside the training and I’ll be more than happy to show you around.

Do you have any thoughts or questions about this review? Feel free to leave your comments below.

Comments

I was thinking about getting started with BlogPress, but wasn’t sure if it was worth it or not. I will definitely be giving it more thought now that I have read your article. Wealthy Affiliate definitely sounds like they know what they are doing and will be looking into them as well.

Hi Leah, one of the most important things that you will learn from WA is keyword research technique which is crucially lacking in many other training sites. Content is what drives traffic to a blog, but if you go all out to write one without knowing what keywords to target, it will be very hard to achieve a good SEO.

I know you’ll be impressed with WA once you try it. If you need any help in the blogosphere, just let me know.

How I Started My Online Business With Wealthy AffiliateI have tried both and left BlogPress quick. A year or so later, I found Wealthy Affiliate and I am in awe. I haven’t gotten very far because I have been going through the training in stages, but I can definitely say that I learned more from WA than I did from BP.

The community is amazing. I have just found an interesting niche and starting on my blog site. Monetizing is the hard part for me right now, though.

Hi there Craig, the beginning is always the most challenging part. It’s not only about the money, but also how to structure your site to make it visible in the eyes of Googles and to attract customers to your whatever you are promoting. No doubt, it is a steep learning curve, but if you continue to write interesting content for your niche, I assure that your traffic will eventually convert.

I have heard of this training site before and did some research on them awhile back. I actually use WordPress because I like the flexibility of the platform when it comes to blogging. BlogPress’s limited storage space is a concern for me though.

Plugins are an important feature to have which can give online businesses that desired flexibility and functionality which unfortunately, BlogPress doesn’t have. I’m surprised they don’t provide for that, but I am guessing it could be related to the limited storage space.

Hi Cathy, I must confess that I found BlogPress to be somewhat interesting from what you have said, their training sounds good. Who wouldn’t want good training? However, I considered that along with their good training, there should also be a more systematic way to monetize. Isn’t that why we blog in the first place? Considering the cons, I do not find BlogPress right for me.

Hi Dorcas, the lack of niche and keyword research in their format of training will certainly misguide beginners who are clueless about online marketing. Those are crucial foundation to make money from a blog as it is needed to attract targeted audience and convert affiliate programs into sales commissions.

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Hi there! Cathy here and I created this blog to help you achieve more time (and financial) freedom. I hope you'll find some exciting ideas on this site to start an online business. My entrepreneurial journey began in 2014 and I've never looked back since. Here's my story...